Maine will ban E15 if at least two other New England states follow suit

The Maine Department of Environmental Protection is working on a bill that would ban E15 fuel blends from being sold within the state. E15 is a blend of fuel that has 15% ethanol content compared to the E10 with 10% ethanol that is common across the country today. The United States EPA approved the sale of E15 in June of 2012.

However, filling stations have been very slow to adopt the new E15 blend and as of now, the fuel is only available at 10 stations in Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska. The Maine Department of Environmental Protection says that it will ban E15 blends within the state if at least two other New England states go along with the prohibition.

The move comes amid concerns that many vehicles on the highways today and most small engines don't support the higher ethanol content in E15 fuel. The ethanol industry is reportedly aggressively marketing the new E15 blend in seeking to spread its availability outside of the current small footprint.

“We see the writing on the wall from the feds, and we want to make sure that Maine consumers and businesses are protected if others in the region are doing the same,” said DEP spokeswoman Samantha DePoy-Warren.

AAA recently conducted a survey and found that five automotive manufacturers specifically state warranties do not cover E15 related engine damage. Eight other automakers have said that E15 fuel does not comply with their vehicles fuel requirements. On the flipside, the Renewable Fuels Association, an ethanol industry association, claimed that 60% of the light-duty vehicles on the roads within the U.S. today can use E15 fuel blend.

Yeah, dunno why you got rated down. Ethanol itself isn't the problem. It's got some idiosyncrasies that need to be dealt with on the engineering side, but so does gasoline. It makes a decent fuel, and will be more so as we further refine methods of turning plant matter (or algae) into ethanol.

It's corn ethanol which is the problem. Corn is a terrible crop for making ethanol.

Corn is the only way to currently make Ethanol affordable. Never mind that finding investors to scale up algae science experiments must now compete with a subsidized food crop being perverted into a fuel. Never mind that it increases demand for corn leading to volatile prices and damage to other forms of food supply (i.e. corn prices' impact on feed for livestock).

This is not environmentalism. Whichever environmentalists support this sort of market manipulation need their heads examined. Perhaps give them a copy of the Bible since they're obviously in the same camp as the science-is-the-devil crowd.